How a Marine Officer Grew a $3M Business to $23M

then people don't want to do business with you.

Again, they save time, they make more money. But that stuff doesn't happen overnight. You know, it takes a minute to get my vision for a company in there. Ryan's term is a discipline, strategic, and mission-driven business leader,

and president of Win Supply of Omaha. Drawing from his experience as a U.S. Marine Corps officer and executive, he leads with accountability, growth, and a commitment to developing people. The less I have to tell people what to do, and they just know what they need to do, and that's ideal.

“What has been one of the biggest factors of your growth over the years?”

Was it expanding into the new market of HVACs, or was it growing your team? It's a matter of... Living your legacy podcast for those who live, to leave a legacy. Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host again, Jay Slangen, and we're here on here at the Sunny Miami Beach Studios,

and yeah, we got the privilege of speaking to some of the best entrepreneurs in the country, the Disrupters, and today, yeah, we got someone for our operations CEO show, and let's not mention this, what's your name, where are you from, and what's your business? My name is Ryan Sturm. I currently from Omaha, Nebraska, and I run on the present of Win Supply of Omaha.

So we are a PVF plumbing HVAC distributor there in Omaha. Okay, okay, and so this is Operation CEO, right? So give us a brief background of your time and the military. So I got in in 2006, the whole reason I got into this would be a pilot. Turns out when you get into car accident and smash your skull open, they don't like that.

So I ended up being a financial 3040 for financial management officer, so I spent three years at Camp Pendleton, deployed once with the 11th Marine Expression Area in it, and then three years at the recruit, depo, helping train recruits, that's pretty much it, luckily to be in San Diego, pretty much the whole time. Okay, wow.

And so yeah, that means it was a kind of transition into civilian life pretty easy for you, or... It was once we figured out what we were gonna do, because, yeah, it's just weird when you get out of the military, you have no idea what you're gonna do. But I mean, it seems like they kind of trained you with financial skills and leadership skills,

“wow, a lot of other people, they have the battlefield skills, and so that's why I'm asking about your transition.”

So I still said that you still don't know what you wanted to do, so talk us through that transition a bit. Well, luckily, I had a head owner, Alliance careers, so they put you in front of all these different companies looking for military officers. Oh, actually kind of, you know, improve the company's leadership, yeah. I ended up with the company the time's called Win wholesale, now it's called Win Supply. Let you run your own business, the way you see fit, like they're, they kind of let entrepreneurs kind of do their own thing.

So it was a nice, it was a nice, smooth transition. Yeah, my MLS in the Marine Corps wasn't, it's weird, you don't learn, like, finance or anything like that.

You basically were just handling stuff within stuff with money within the military, it's kind of interesting, yeah, it's definitely different.

All right, and so how did you find this company, you know, like we just googling, or it was, you know, kind of showing to you by another someone else on the military? Yeah, no, it was just, it was through that head owner that they, you know, they put you in front of all these different companies and he was the last,

“last interview I did, and how did you find the head owner, why did you decide to go through the head owner?”

It was just, it was one of the other guys was unit, it was getting out and they didn't, yeah, they just offered, offered to do it, like, had to apply it on all this stuff and yeah, that's pretty much it, it was pretty simple. I just went on the recommendation of another, another captain that was getting out. Yeah, I'm just asking because a lot of, you know, a lot of men and women, they, that transition is such a, it's almost a bigger part of their story than the actual military part, you know, because there's just a lot of questions,

confusions, you know, so yeah, any, any tips and advice, you know, for others listening to this show,

it's always helpful, right? Like how people find their way after, right?

So just, I mean, you start Google Interest sort of asking people who they've used. And so that brings us to win supply, I see the logo on your shirt, right? Win supply of what's it said by, oh, my hub, oh my hub, oh my hub, oh my hub, oh my hub, oh my hub, oh my hub, and you said that when supply came from another company and they let you be an entrepreneur, so kind of them walk us through that. So when supply is equity partners with the 680 plus win locations across the country,

okay, that's basically, and they, they just have a majority stake in every business and they're there to help. They're not, and that's, that's the role they just allow people that want to run their own

“business to have ownership and run a business as they see fit. And so how's that deal look?”

Like so you, you find out about their, their company, right? And they're saying, hey, if you want to be a distributor of like HVACs or whatever they supply, right, you can be the local Omaha distributor, is that kind of it? There's, there's already established companies across the

country, and they're always looking, you know, some people are transitioning out, you know,

they're retiring or whatever, so, you know, always looking for people that want to run their own business and take over as a president, because that's a guy's it. Then you get ownership, you know, it's got to be vetted by the board of the company and stuff like that, but it's essentially how it works, and then once you kind of get rolling, as long as you're successful, you know, you can kind of just run the business as you see fit and like sell what you want to sell.

“I mean, it's primarily, it started as a primarily a plumbing distributor, but it's”

fresh off into HVAC waterworks, electrical stuff like that. All right. Today, help out with any marketing or a direction or, you know, how's that work? Kind of they, they, again, since they're an equity partner, they help with, you know, IT payroll stuff like that, like stuff that I don't want to deal with. I just put a go-run a company, but they assist with that type of stuff. A little bit of marketing, they're not, not that they've started to do a little bit more, but

very conservative company kind of just, and it's, it's really that way to allow the individual launch entrepreneur to go do what they want to do, run their businesses they see fit. That's kind

of by design. Yeah. So, no, I'm curious because it's the first time that I've heard this kind of

system, you know, usually these entrepreneurs, they're kind of jumping off the cliff, hoping to build a parachute on the way down, and this is almost like someone that has a parachute and says, hey, you want to be an entrepreneur jump off this cliff, right? Right. It's, I mean, it's a challenge. I don't know, I didn't know the first thing about plumbing, like, but really got out of the record. Like, okay, I guess I'm going to go run a plumbing company that

or distribute or what I have no clue. Yeah. So, they assist you in trying to coach you a little bit, spend it spending your, at another local company, trying to learn the business, but it's, it's a great company. Just, it's, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work to get that going. Tell us how big your company is. Tell us your, your main products and services and kind of what's

that's you apart from from others in competition. I gotta go back, because I took over Wichita first.

“I ran that company for a decade. All right. That, I think they'll do around 24 million in sales”

or so. I don't, I don't, I don't exactly know, but it's there in the 20s, but then Omaha will do similar 25ish 26 somewhere on there. So, and so when you, I guess inherited the company instead of running the company, how, how's it grown since? A lot. It's, I think the first year we did run on 14, 17, 5 last year, and then it's kind of, we brought on HVAC, which has been a nice addition. I mean, it's the same, same thing that kind of happened in Wichita, just trying to get the right

culture and people and processes in there, getting established within the market, which is the, but no, it's Omaha's crazy. It's crazy right now. It's in terms of what? It's just, there's just building everywhere. Oh, yeah. It's just nuts. The amount of construction going on at Omaha. I mean, it's just, everywhere you look. There's just something, it's just crazy. That's good. That's good to hear in the states, because I lived in Southeast Asia for 16 years, right? We're at a lot in Thailand or the

Thailand, Shanghai, my a lot Bangkok, some Singapore also. Yeah. And then I was kind of traveling all over as a as a guide as well, photographer. And so you see cranes and buildings and skyscrapers popping up in all the major cities like crazy over there. And then you don't really hear about that growth much. I mean, yeah, you see it here in Miami. You know, Miami is kind of found a lot of growth right now. But then you kind of don't see it a lot in other major American cities. So it's good to hear. Oh,

yeah, it's a, I mean, it's a very different coming from which top of there was two companies in Omaha.

“There's depending on you look at it. It takes a round of community. So it's, yeah, it's nuts. There's”

just a lot of stuff going on there right now. So what has been one of the biggest factors of your growth over the years was it expanding into the new market of HVACs or was it growing your team? Tell us about some of that. It's a matter of developing who you got hiring to your, you know, hiring people to fill in those gaps where you're not as strong. And then it's a lot of in my opinion, getting getting the company running to the point where your customers can

trust you, your vendors can trust you that, you know, their pricing is consistent, their deliveries are done on time. They enjoy working with you. Like more than anything. Like it's, it's really just a matter of getting, you know, all those things in place. At some point, once it starts working, then people don't want to do business with you. It seems like because again, they save time. They make more money. Yeah. So it's just, uh, but that stuff doesn't happen overnight. You know,

it kind of takes a minute to get my vision for a company in there. Of course. And so would you say where the mouth marketing has been one of your biggest, uh, you know, ways to market one hundred percent. You have, you know, a contractor tell, you know, be happy with us. And then they'll tell another contractor like, hey, check, you know, when supply them while they do a good job, same thing. And they're proud. When, when, when, and their protest says, when, when you can help

someone out and be like, hey, I got a guy. Right. And it's like, I'm going to let you win on a guy. So you kind of only want to give you my guy, right? So it's like, it's a good for you. It's good for him, you know, because he's helping out. That's a, that's a three way win, right? Right? Yeah. It's I'm super fun to, to be able to run a business and do this every day like I have a great time.

Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. And so yeah, I guess everyone here, you know, what are they most

excited about? What's on, what's on the horizon? Uh, what, what are the things you were going to? Uh, really just, I'm still trying to build the team out. The growth this year has been pretty crazy. Okay. From 17 five to whatever in the 20s we end up at, but just getting the right people in the right spots, still there's some processes. We got to figure out the warehouse. How are we going to bring all the stuff that we're trying to sell in and organize it properly? So

there's still, that's, that's, that's one of the problems like it's like, okay, it's, it's a good problem to have, right? But it comes with problems, right? Yes. Like you're talking about, okay, well, we're expanding, we're growing like crazy, but now it's like can we handle all this growth, can we put stuff in the warehouse? Like, how do we organize it quicker and we need to grow, grow, grow, right? Right. But you don't want it to all collapse on yourself either, right? Correct.

How are, how are you taking that, you know? So that organizational stuff is stuff I don't want to deal with. My thing is like, okay, I can see what I want to come into look like. So I've made a lot of hires with people that do enjoy that stuff. So a lot of my warehouse guys are like that.

“And that's so simple and so key. Right. I think, you know, know what you're good at,”

know what you don't like and hire out the, you know, that's stuff that you don't want to do, right? Right. And I, you know, kind of let them run. There was the leadership out of starting the Reencore was like, you don't, you know, don't tell people what to do all the time, like given their right left lateral limit and just let them then tell them what you need done. Don't tell them how to do it. Let them go. And they've done a great job that warehouse looks night and day. Yeah,

from a year ago. Amazing. And so yeah, that's, that's another hard thing to do. It's just letting

them go and not try to micro manage, right? But when it's something that you don't like to do, it's kind of hard to tell them what to do because you don't want to do it and you don't want to do this. It's like, please, right? You know, just do your thing, right? But this is where we need to go. That's what I know. Right. So that's a good way to not micro manage people. Right. That's that's an amazing kind of technique. Right. Yeah, I tried the less I have to tell people what to do and it's, they just

know what they need to do. Yeah. That's ideal. Yeah. A given given direction, you know, and let them try to over-deliver. Right. That comes to let's say hiring and firing. Right. How do you have you had, have you had to fire anyone? Yeah. I mean, sometimes it just doesn't work out. I hate firing people. It's awful. Usually don't sleep tonight before. And then it's just not, not fun. But yeah, I mean, we've hired, I mean, geez, we've probably hired at least 10 people since I've been there.

“Some have worked out. Some have it. So yeah. What are the greatest factors of your success, do you think?”

Just being a genuine leader, like actually taking an interest in people's lives, like your employees,

curious about that type of stuff, you don't have to be fake. So you can just be yourself. I think

people, because people don't follow fake. People follow authenticity. Like, I mean, that's just, I don't know, I'm really bad at lying. So I mean, to like, I can't, I'm really bad at it. So

“I just trench, just always tried to just be honest. Are you bad at poker? You got tells?”

I'm not very good at poker. I'm really not. Yeah. I mean, like, I look at poker, just like, I can't bluff anyone. You know, I just, because I look at my cards pretty much,

very logical. Is there anything special that you kind of go above and beyond to build a relationship?

Or is it just being friendly? Or do you go to the extra mile to get them gifts, send them gift? Or, I don't know, bring them out to dinners. I play a lot of golf. So that's kind of my thing is I take taking people golf. And I like to spend time with people out there, just because

“it's a way from work. You know, around the course, it's sunny. You're going to be”

you're hanging out. Like, you can, it's just cool to hang out with people on that environment. So I don't, I don't know if that's above and beyond, but that's just, it's helped a lot. So yeah, I guess we'll say that. And is that where to mask? Because you built this relationship with them. Yeah. You know, over a nine-hole or 18-hole, you better. Yeah. If you can get through 18 holes with someone, right? You probably do some business with them. Correct. Yes. 100%. So 18 holes and a couple

beers, right? Yeah. Probably more than a couple, if you're playing me, so. Well, it's been

“fantastic to have you on the show. Any final messages you want to guess to know about your”

business or anything? I mean, nothing crazy. When in general is a great company. So I mean, how do people find you? My website is when supply of Omaha.com. But I mean, if anybody in

general is interested in when, I mean, just when supply.com. So there's always looking for

always looking for entrepreneurs and want to want to do their own thing. So yeah. Sounds, sounds incredible. It's the first I've heard of them. But yeah, I mean, thanks for spreading that message and talking about your business. And actually, there's a lot of tips that you gave, right? Yeah. Be, be genuine, right? Just be authentic. Yeah. Yeah. Be authentic. Right? Mental. And if you have veterans like we're getting out where people are about to be veterans, if you have a look at

different hiring services, is it will take a ton of weight off your chest? All right. Yeah. And if you don't want to do something, then hire it out. Right? Give them the direction they'll find the way. Correct. All right. Well, thank you for joining us. And thank you guys for joining us here at Living Your Legacy. But yeah, Operation CEO, we talk with a lot of great veterans that have found their way and the transition into that civilian life through entrepreneurship and have become

success. And they are, you know, they're hiring veterans and they just know how to navigate that post service life. So yeah, if you're interested in that tune in some more episodes, you get a lot of great tips. And all right. Thank you guys for joining us. Cheers, everyone. [BLANK_AUDIO]